DENVER--Stephen Curry had a cold, cold look in is eyes for the last half of Game 5 on Tuesday, and he still had it in the locker room later.

He looked outraged after the Warriors' 107-100 loss to Denver. He looked bruised. Really, he looked like he was plotting vengeance.

And most of all, Curry looked like he wanted to play Game 6 right here, right now instead of having to wait until Thursday at Oracle Arena.

"Man, I'm not going to back down," Curry said calmly and icily after describing Denver's legal and illegal shots at him through the game. "It's fun -- a fun atmosphere, fun type of basketball. They're trying to do anything they can to get back in the series, so you've got to expect it."

Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) is pressured by Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried in the fourth quarter of Game 5 of their first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Tuesday, April 30, 2013, in Denver. The Nuggets won 107-100. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

It's not happy-fun, it's edgy NBA playoff-fun, where the longer a series goes, the more the passion and dislike boils over into something like an alley fight.

And where there are on-court taunts and messages sent, including, according to Warriors sources, Nuggets players repeatedly telling Curry that he was a soft player.

The Warriors still lead this series 3-2, and now they are angry, too.

Curry started slowly but had several baskets during the Warriors' fourth-quarter rally ... when he had that look.

"He did and that may be something they've got to watch out for in Game 6," Draymond Green said of Curry and the Nuggets. "Because if you go after a guy like that ... the result might not be what you were hoping for."

Advertisement

Though the Warriors were clearly outplayed in this game, which denied them their first shot at clinching this series, their locker room was feeling good about the late comeback and the home game Thursday.

And mostly, they were fuming about the hits Curry took from the first minutes of this game.

The general point: The Nuggets delivered most of the hits--legal or not--and the Warriors failed because they didn't recover until the fourth quarter, when it was too late.

The implied point: The Warriors are planning to hit first, second, third and 100th on Thursday.

"Whether they're taking cheap shots or not, we'll discuss that at the end of the series," Andrew Bogut said. "We just need to match their physicality and we're going to do that in Game 6."

The Warriors got some hits in on Kenneth Faried, who was the recipient of flagrant fouls from both Bogut and Green.

But in the Warriors locker room, Curry-for-Faried was clearly not deemed to be quite an eye for an eye after Curry has dominated the first part of this series.

Did Curry think they were cheap shots?

"There were a couple, man," Curry said. "I'm going through the paint minding my own business and they come out of nowhere, trying to throw elbows and stuff like that ... "I'm not going to be surprised if it happens again the next game. Just keep playing."

So you felt you were targeted?

"Yeah, I've been playing well so you want to slow it down as much as possible," Curry said. "But like I said, we gave up a 20-point lead and they did all they could to try to take us out of our game, and we figured out a way to make it interesting down the stretch.

"I feel like our confidence is high."

Jackson took it farther, saying that the Nuggets were targeting Curry's injured left ankle and suggesting that a member of Denver's organization basically apologized to him for it.

"The screen on Curry by the foul line is a shot at his ankle, clearly, it can't be debated," Jackson said of a first-quarter play. "I have inside information that some people don't like that brand of basketball and they clearly didn't co-sign it, so they wanted to let me know that they had no part in what was taking place."

Now there will be a long two-city debate about the propriety of the Curry and Faried hits, with no final conclusion.

But the only practical debate is about how the Warriors will respond, how physical it might get in Game 6, and which team will get the advantage from it.

Rough-and-tumble certainly is not the Warriors' reputation and absolutely not Curry's reputation.

But then he got the look--Curry even got into a brief verbal confrontation with a Pepsi Center fan at the end.

"Somebody said something dumb and I just told him to be quiet, that was it," Curry said. "This is fun. This is what it's about, playoff basketball."

Well, it is now. It's fun, but it's angry fun, and Curry is right in the middle of it, with an icy smile and revenge on his mind.